First quantum crypto bank transfer
Cryptography system goes underground (Aug 19) http://physicsweb.org/article/news/8/8/13 A group of scientists in Austria and Germany has installed an optical fibre quantum cryptography system under the streets of Vienna and used it to perform the first quantum secure bank wire transfer (A Poppe et al. 2004 Optics Express 12 3865). The quantum cryptography system consisted of a transmitter (Alice) at Vienna's City Hall and a receiver (Bob) at the headquarters of an Austrian bank. The sites were linked by 1.45 kilometres of single-mode optical fibre. -- Andrew G. Thomas
RE: Drunken US Troops Kill Rare Tiger
> Vote for some one who promises freedom,democracy and > development. Is that so hard? Freedom means what to you? Getting to vote once every four or five years on what direction your country is going to take? What if freedom means an anarchive un-state? Being forced to subjugate your views to those of others on the basis of your geographical locality, while being prevented from gathering with others who may share your political views in sufficient numbers such as to be able to succesfully secede is not freedom. What is development? Market liberalisation? Socialism? Statism or the removal of the state aparatus? In statist, capitalist democracy, reduce or increase taxes? Remove or increase social welfare and support? Permit or restrict immigration? If you are sold on blanket, unqualified terms such as 'freedom', 'development' and 'democracy', and are willing to accept the empty rhetoric espoused by most politicians without critical analysis, then you'd probably make a good subject of the current system. Or am I wrong? -- Andrew G. Thomas
RE: Random musing about words and spam
Thomas: > > I must reiterate that, given the relentless efficiency of > > spam-spiders, merely publishing a shadow email address on all web > > documents that your real email address reside on, and deleting all > > email sent to both accounts is my current favorite anti-spam > > mechanism. Simple to DIY, and requires no centralization. > > This approach assumes you are able to detect duplicates > (which may be difficult to do if each spam sent out would be > different, eg. using different sets of pseudowords - which is > already being done in some cases, from the day antispam > systems based on hashes of known spams were introduced), and > depends on the duplicates actually reaching your both > addresses within reasonable timeframe. If one of the addresses was not ever used for legitimate purposes, then blocking all addresses that sent to this address should be an effective filter. Also, with the low cost of storage today, storing message hashes of known spam wouldn't take much space (not to say that this would be a good way of identifying spam). I was pondering recently the usage of a "web of trust"-type system whereby one could use communal whitelists with decreasing trust going outward as well as the opportunity to selected trusted sources - perhaps using authentication authorities for PK's as authoratitive whitelists, or not, as per ones choice. (Since PK's require identification for the issue of certs, it at least provides some chain of evidence. However, this negates the opportunity for anonymity). How feasible are implementations of such 'distributed' whitelists? (I'm assuming that entries from non-whitelist identified emails are permitted to send through on a challenge-response basis, and that once identified, users have the opportunity to add to such whitelist). And, is it possible to indentify a bit of information as coming from a trusted source, without identifying that trusted source and without resorting to the use of a TTP? -- Andrew G. Thomas Hobbs & Associates Chartered Accountants (SA) (o) +27-(0)21-683-0500 (f) +27-(0)21-683-0577 (m) +27-(0)83-318-4070
RE: DoS of spam blackhole lists
John: .. > a) admit that your stupid, self-appointed-netcop blacklists > and self-righteous spam projects are inherently flawed, and .. > Please spend your sophomore year working on something besides > "self-appointed-spam-netcop-site-of-the-week". .. >..., and don't require > some asshole swooping in to save us with his miraculous spews > database. .. I fail to see how the above is at all necessary in responding to the statement. Either a) an explanation, or b) a link to an explanation as to why you have these opinions would have been far more useful than the above troll. > b) realize that the distributed method you suggest already > exists - it is called procmail(*). Procmail serves no purpose by itself. It requires no small amount of effort on the part of the administrator to utilise for any type of systems implmentation, and thus administrators with limited time (common in smaller companies) will rather rely on (flawed) projects than self-initiated implementations. > (*) or you could setup a dummy email account on all > web-published documents, and delete any email that arrives in > both mailboxes, or you could implement a challenge/response > mechanism for all new senders. All three mechanisms > mentioned are distributed, independent The above is useful information. Specifically, the recognition of duplicate mail receipts is a concept that is new to me, though that would require that both email addresses would receive an equal amount of 'publicity' on newsgroups, mailing lists, etc in order that they are both acquired by a potential spammer. The latter idea I have heard before. If you have a preferred implementation however, which one it is and why is information that I would find useful. A. -- Andrew G. Thomas Hobbs & Associates Chartered Accountants (SA) (o) +27-(0)21-683-0500 (f) +27-(0)21-683-0577 (m) +27-(0)83-318-4070
DoS of spam blackhole lists
Hi, Considering that it appears that spammers are now resorting to DoS'ing sites that host spam lists, wouldn't now be a good time to investigate the possibilities of a distributed, or at least, load balanced blacklist provider? Even something as simple as round-robin DNS with sufficient nodes (couple of hundred?) should be enough to make such attacks highly inefficient and far, far less likely to be effective. Of course, with round robin DNS, one can target the DNS servers. Would this make for an interesting community project? Any comments appreciated. -- Andrew G. Thomas Hobbs & Associates Chartered Accountants (SA) (o) +27-(0)21-683-0500 (f) +27-(0)21-683-0577 (m) +27-(0)83-318-4070
